Here's a sign that Apple is not only thinking seriously about touchscreen iMacs, but that it has a rather smarter view of the technology than its rivals.
A just-discovered patent application - kudos to Patently Apple - shows not a touchscreen machine per se but a clever stand designed to make using a touchscreen desktop all-in- …

@Ivan Headache

Prior art?

Here, here, Apple's doing it again...

I happen to own a couple of SyncMaster 971p displays. Though they're not touchscreens, their hinges are exactly like presented in the application, and, naturally, allow for a very shallow angle if such is desired, and even for fully horizontal display.

Moreover, I'm sure I've seen a Wacom display-drawing tablet combo, which is too, naturally, touch-sensitive, and is also almost horizontal.

No...

It's not the same as a 21" Cintiq. For a start the Cintiq doesn't do touch. Secondly, the stand isn't spring-loaded allowing for easy repositioning. Thirdly, the Cintiq doesn't have a accelerometer built in to it so it can switch view modes when it's position is changed. If you actually take the time to read **just the 'Patently Apple' article**, you'd know this, but it's much easier to jump the gun and denounce this as 'prior art' to sound like one of the 'cool' kids. Chaps, stop it. Hardly any of you, **including you bloggers/journalists**, have any real understanding of patent law, which is in very stark evidence, and all we end up with is a list of ill-informed rants and articles based on rhetoric and conjecture.

Yawn, TC1100 *again*

They weren't happy ripping off the form factor of the TC1100 for the iPad, they've also ripped off the stand too. Let me guess, the stand allows for portrait/landscape rotation too? Sheesh, they should have just photocopied a TC1100 brochure and sent that in for patenting...

Another patent?

Go to Google, click on images, and search for "touch screen cash register" and you will find dozens of examples of tiltable and touchable screens. Of course they do not look quite as pretty as the fruity offerings mentioned here but then they will probably stand a damn site more wear and tear too.

Hope this means

That native touchscreen support will appear on Mac OS X soon. I'd like to see my Acer T230H supported on a Mac Mini as I'm planning to get one soon for experimental purposes (4 ports on KVM. Only three used at the moment. Not happy about how the wire on the fourth port is left dangling in thin air).

Nah

I'm probably not the first...

I'm probably not the first to comment on this, but...

It looks like a very good idea to implement this, but I can't see how it is worthy of a patent. It's just a regular tiltable desk stand. I'm sure there are plenty of previous art: a generic touch screen mounted on a generic vesa mount (with tilt) for instance.

American patents

Oh Yeah!

This works. Just move it closer, say within arm's length, and all is well. Why you can even make the screen smaller since it'll be so much closer. But for me this is a waste of time and effort. If I want a computer right at my fingertips, I'll just use my netbook. No screen smudges either; fewer chances of scratches too..

Nice to see...

The same fundemental drawback

All touch screens suffer from the same basic problem (yes, even ones blessed with a half-eaten fruit on the logo) - your finger covers up the thing you want to select.

That doesn't matter too much with little media players, but it's a helluva problem when you're trying to draw or alter a picture. "Now where exactly does that line end? Oh yes, somewhere under my left index-finger"

Same goes for cut'n'paste: with fingers the size of mine it's tricky to see exactly what words you're including and where the CnP ends.

Maybe when Apple patents transparent fingers, so it's possible to see what is at the point-of-selection it'll become easier. But until then, I'll stick with a selection tool that does not obscure the very part display I want to make the selection from

Stylus required

I think to take the drawing board simile to its natural conclusion, Apple would intend you draw on this with a stylus, or maybe even a glass with cross-hairs type affair. (Both have been done before by the way, so still the prior-art argument applies.)

It's an iPad stand

I still don't get it

Logical enough solution, but quite frankly I still don't get it. I just seriously cannot see the point of dragging your monitor across your desk in and flipping it over just so you can use it with your fingers, if you are going to fo that, you may as well just get a touchscreen tablet. I just think companies are trying to force a technology into an area that just doesn't suit it well, particularly when that area already has a perfectly good input solution that works. It works great at info kiosks and is perfectly suited to mobile devices, it just doesn't fit with a desktop in my opinion.

Do this with ordinary monitors

At last !

I'm not an Apple fan but this is a much more natural reading position (like reading a magazine)and it is obvious this will be the future with touch screens and maybe ordinary screens too. Normal monitor stands never have sufficiently low adjustment for me although some HP ones go pretty low. I bought an arm instead which allows me to do this already. We may even see indented desks in future to allow better ergonimics.

Are you lot wilfully missing the point?

Clearly, the patent isn't in the 'hey look, we tilted a screen!' bit. *Look* at the diagram, it's a concept of having a monitor at arms length, or a tablet at your fingertips - ie it's doesn't just tilt back, it drops forward and down as it does so. It's a 'so-simple-it's-obvious' development as the Reg says, but it's the key to making a desktop touch-friendly. I haven't seen any other screens that do this.

Common Sense

Yes, unfortunately...

Article & Comments Completely Miss the Point!

The innovation here is not the bloody hinge ... it's that the hinge has sensors, so that when the screen is angled horizontally the computer switches from an OSX device to an iOS device! When you tilt it back up, it goes back to your OSX session.

VOCA

...have been using similar (and rather better 720 degree) mounts for wheelchair users for at least 30 years. Don't Apple do any research into previous applications of touchpanels and surface devices....

Oh, come on...

With Apple's history of attracting patent trolls, is it any wonder that they'd go for a patent for this patently obvious design? I doubt they'd try to enforce it against any other company, but with this they have protected themselves from some opportunistic turd who wants to try trolling some similarly obvious tilty-screen patent in Apple's direction.